POD 111 (with cave painting slides!): Cullen Clark on the traditional use of psychedelic mushrooms in Africa
Added 2024-08-31 16:28:20 +0000 UTCThis is the video recording with accompanying cave painting slides, the slides begin at 1:43. I talk with ethnomycologist Cullen Clark about his work describing two new Psilocybe species in Southern Africa and becoming the first outsider to observe and describe the use of Psilocybe species in African traditional medicine. Clark also provides an extended analysis of African cave art depicting mushroom use, a video accompanying this talk with relevant slides will be uploaded later today. This is definitely worth a listen!
Comments
Great stuff to learn! Mr. Clark seems like a lovely person, I'm sure the (aging) healers enjoyed sharing their knowledge to a young man like that. Wishing all the best on his journey of discovery!
Honey-el
2024-09-30 17:30:07 +0000 UTCGreat work
Samantha Firoze Sethna
2024-09-28 10:42:55 +0000 UTCThis is all the good shit. Archeology, anthropology, psychedelics, consciousness, Art, mycology, etc. I am seduced.
Meek
2024-09-26 17:04:04 +0000 UTCreally surprised by this. When i traveled southern africa in zimbabwe, south africa and mozambique none of them knew what a psychodelic was or even had words for it in the native languages. Really surprising to see this episode really looking forward to it.
Potent Ponics
2024-09-24 22:02:16 +0000 UTCThis is incredible! Mysteries remain, indeed.
gossamer
2024-09-24 02:09:52 +0000 UTCIβd love to hear the mix π
Chip Beckstead
2024-09-20 03:21:17 +0000 UTCFirst thought as well!
Chip Beckstead
2024-09-20 03:17:47 +0000 UTCIβm on my third listen, back to back, and Iβm absolutely floored by this. Iβve never seen anything like this and it certainly feels like this is a precipice, and that weβre looking at the origin of an entirely new avenue of mycological study that is the most exciting I can imagine.
AverageAtom
2024-09-12 12:21:27 +0000 UTCYeah, it's very interesting. Years ago when I was writing "Blood Spore" I spent some time attempting to fact-check the claim, there was a man (IIRC a navy vet and possibly a farmer) in Florida named Silva Caperton but that's about as far as I could get. Stephen L. Peele was involved in a somewhat high profile psychomycological scandal with "Peele's Lepiota" another rabbit hole.
Hamilton Morris
2024-09-08 19:01:23 +0000 UTCI found a few of his journals last night, there are some from 2004 to 2008 online, but I'm assuming the goods are in one much earlier. In TEO #10 November 2004, there was this article by Stephen L. Peele, titled "And Thats Why You Sweat When You Eat Psilocybe Cubensis", at the end of it he states: "I documented this back to the 1920's. Yes, even before Wasson went down into Mexico and discovered the "Mushrooms That Cause Strange Visions", there were people in this country [USA] that ate Ps. cubensis to medicate arthritis." Kind of an interesting medical/historical comment...
B-Boy Bungus
2024-09-07 14:12:23 +0000 UTCInspiring! As someone currently pursuing professional mycology this has me wanting to look into the ethnomycological history of my local area
bob dilty
2024-09-07 06:42:44 +0000 UTCI'd do some crazy shit to get my hands on a spore print of this african mushroom.
Crypto Tonight
2024-09-07 05:47:34 +0000 UTCI know of him just from seeing other people search for his journals TEO & TMC; I 'd love to see the reference, if at all possible... Thanks!
B-Boy Bungus
2024-09-07 04:51:08 +0000 UTCYeah, this is a pretty odd reference but there is a mycologist and former cop named Stephen L. Peele who wrote several things about a dairy farmer named, IIRC, Silva Caperton who claimed to have discovered the activity of P. cubensis in Florida years before evidence of Mazatec use was published. He wrote this in an obscure (and I believe not digitized) newsletter/journal he used to sell. I can try to dig it up and attach photos but I don't think it's online.
Hamilton Morris
2024-09-07 04:28:45 +0000 UTCAny chance you can share the reference to pre-Wasson Florida diary farmers and cubensis mushrooms? Thanks!
B-Boy Bungus
2024-09-06 22:22:47 +0000 UTCYes, The Radioactive Boyscout is an incredible story! David Hahn later got into drugs and I wonder if he was engaged in clandestine synthesis. I've tried to interview someone engaged in industrial manufacture for a long time, I haven't had much luck, if anyone has suggestions I'm open to it.
Hamilton Morris
2024-09-06 17:56:35 +0000 UTCI would love to hear an interview with a chemist who manages a large-scale pharmaceutical manufacturing process, like very large scale, even if it was something as simple as aspirin. The problems associated with large scale synthesis and manufacturing always interest me, especially the equipment, cleaning, recovery etc. Similarly, I'm interested in chemists that manufacture incredibly dangerous materials, and have to have the entire synthesis sealed off. Both seem to present a bunch of interesting problems. I'm also wondering if you ever read "The Radioactive Boyscout" by Ken Silverstein. Amateur, clandestine, nuclear chemistry stuff...
B-Boy Bungus
2024-09-06 14:36:22 +0000 UTCAnyone specifically or you just want me to interview a chemist employed by a university?
Hamilton Morris
2024-09-06 03:10:39 +0000 UTCDo more talks with academic chemists
Cuck
2024-09-05 15:06:50 +0000 UTCYes, this occurred to me as well.
Hamilton Morris
2024-09-05 04:40:14 +0000 UTCTo me the cave painting at 1:54:15 could be saying, βThese mushrooms gave us really bad diarrheaβ.
Brendan K
2024-09-05 02:44:21 +0000 UTCAbsolutely fascinating
Austin Lennan
2024-09-03 23:31:41 +0000 UTCThanks for your thoughts on projecting prejudice. The idea that we should treat every interaction as some kind of power dynamic to be rectified is exhausting, and a big step away from good old fashioned humanism.
Dasloops
2024-09-03 16:00:02 +0000 UTCThe best part about the cave art is that most of them feature figures with penises. Not only because it's hilarious, especially watching both of you politely ignore the comical dick proportions, but it removes the ambiguity of the mushroom depictions. The dicks are right there, so there's no ambiguity as to what they're holding - shroom confirmed Same goes for the ones with arrows in them, or more commonly arrows AND dicks
Keenan Troll
2024-09-03 05:29:42 +0000 UTCcheers mate , legend
.:. reyne
2024-09-01 21:24:15 +0000 UTCYeah go for it.
Hamilton Morris
2024-09-01 16:53:11 +0000 UTC.:. hey Hamilton do you mind if i use some of the audio for a musical performance im cooking up . particularly the part about mirrors . we're gonna have mirrors facing the audience for an effect similar to that which you experienced and expressed in this podcast . awareness of self and such .
.:. reyne
2024-09-01 08:07:04 +0000 UTCHamilton have you heard of Jean-Francois Sobiecki, the author of African Psychoactive Plants: Journeys in Phytoalchemy? He is one of the few people who is investigating Africa in this context and has found striking similarities between other cultures, for example certain indigenous groups in Africa employing the same technique of dieta that is found in the Amazon, the technique of no salt sugar sex etc to connect with the spirit of a particular plant over an extended period of time
Marco
2024-09-01 01:50:12 +0000 UTCYeah and I everest understand how these people miss the point on all of this, it's like their brains need a good beating.
Toby Powell
2024-09-01 00:18:59 +0000 UTCYeah this is exactly what Terrence McKenna predicted, since africa used to be a jungle 1000 years ago this makes sense.
Toby Powell
2024-09-01 00:18:20 +0000 UTCFascinating ! Love this content
matt jauregui
2024-08-31 19:18:21 +0000 UTCThose pics are so much better of what I imagined them to be while listening to the podcast yesterday! Thanks for this!
Alejandro C.
2024-08-31 17:42:08 +0000 UTCWhat! These slides are so impressive. So clear. Thanks for uploading!!
mia
2024-08-31 16:45:42 +0000 UTCWas wondering if there was going to be a video where we can see the slides you guys were mentioning during the podcast. Super cool. Thank you for your attention to detail.
Lilveiss
2024-08-31 16:37:15 +0000 UTC
